About EThOS

EThOS is the UK’s national thesis service which aims to maximise the
visibility and availability of the UK’s doctoral research theses.

It demonstrates the quality of UK research, and supports the UK Government’s
open access principle that publications resulting from publicly-funded research
should be made freely available for all researchers, providing opportunities
for further research. EThOS helps institutions to meet the expectation of the
UK Research Councils that PhDs supported by a Research Council Training Grant
should be made freely available in an open access repository, as indicated
in its Training Grant Terms & Conditions (Paragraph 104).

EThOS aims to provide:

A national aggregated record of all doctoral theses awarded
by UK Higher Education institutions

Free access to the full text of as many theses as possible
for use by all researchers to further their own research.

There are approximately 480,000 records relating to theses awarded by
over 120 institutions. Around 260,000 of these also provide access to the
full text thesis, either via download from the EThOS database or via links
to the institution’s own repository. Of the remaining 220,000 records dating
back to at least 1800, three quarters are available to be ordered for scanning
through the EThOS digitisation-on-demand facility.

Records are held for all UK PhD-awarding institutions, but we do not (yet)
hold all records for all institutions. Every month around 3000 new records are
added and an additional 2000 full text theses become accessible. Access routes
to the full text are determined by the individual institution and may depend
on:

Mandatory electronic deposit of newly awarded theses by its students

Availability of its theses in the institutional repository

Its level of repository development

Digitisation priorities for its print theses

The digitisation on demand facility is a unique feature of EThOS and brings
new e-born theses and older print content together into a single place. Users
ordering a copy through digitisation on demand may experience a turnaround time
of up to 6 weeks. There may also be a charge for the scanning process (currently £48.60 + VAT £9.72 = Total £58.32). Details are
provided within each record.

EThOS continues to be developed to benefit both participating institutions and users.
In June 2015 new data started to be added: ORCID
and ISNI are two international author systems which provide
unique identity profiles for any researcher or author to support the visibility and re-use of their works.
Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are unique persistent identifiers for research works increasingly issued and
required by publishers and should be used to cite or link to the work wherever possible.
All three identifiers are now being embraced by universities for their students, academics, PhD theses and other works.

The EThOS Toolkit provides further information about all aspects of the service.